


New Worlds for the Weary, New Lands for the Living

by dynamicsymmetry



Category: The Walking Dead (TV)
Genre: Angst, Asexual Relationship, Asexuality, Depression, Developing Relationship, Eventual Romance, Grief/Mourning, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, M/M, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Past Relationship(s), Season/Series 05, Sharing a Bed, Slow Burn
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-04-25
Updated: 2018-10-08
Packaged: 2019-04-27 23:24:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 14,975
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14436411
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dynamicsymmetry/pseuds/dynamicsymmetry
Summary: After the flight from Atlanta, Daryl’s grief is crushing him. Healing comes from a place he never would have expected, in a form he never would have believed was possible.





	1. battered hulls and broken hardships

**Author's Note:**

> You know how sometimes you have this story that you’re looking for the entry point to, and you hear this song and suddenly it all breaks wide open?
> 
> Yeah. The lyrics of Josh Ritter’s “Change of Time” came crashing into my head today and I suddenly got the shape of the whole thing. That song is this fic. 
> 
> I’ve been wanting to write this for a while. I don’t write enough explicitly asexual Daryl - I mean, I do headcanon and mostly write him as demisexual, but other than that - and I’ve been wanting to try my hand at it again. So I’m excited about this. 
> 
> Important note: one could interpret some seeds of a past potentially romantic Beth/Daryl relationship here, but I don’t think it’s at all necessary and in fact I’m not personally doing so, so I’m not tagging for it. The only underlying assumption is what’s perfectly clear in canon: Daryl cared deeply for Beth and losing her like he did absolutely destroyed him. The only romance here is with Rick. 
> 
> Hope you enjoy, and please let me know what you think. ❤️

On the whole nightmare ride out of Atlanta, he won't meet Rick’s eyes.

Hours. Then days.

And then.

~

“I know you lost something back there.”

The ludicrous thing, the thing he will never be able to even begin to explain—to anyone else, or to himself—is that what he does first is count the words.

He plays them back in his head and, instead of addressing their meaning and constructing some poor species of response, he counts them. He does this according to the plodding rhythm of his feet, which is the same rhythm he's been moving to for what feels like his entire lifetime. One could fairly say that, in fact, because in the _three weeks since Atlanta_ all the time before Atlanta has receded into unspeakable remoteness, until it feels as if it happened to someone else. Someone he doesn't even know but instead has only been told about. The memories he has are constructed out of information delivered to him by someone else; they're mere imaginings of what might have transpired. But he never experienced any of it.

This is all he's ever had.

Counting the words knocks them out of order and strips them of that meaning he was supposed to address. _Back_ is one of them. _Know_ and _I;_ that's two and three. _There_ and _lost_ are four and five. _You_ —Now that's a thing. That's a thing that carries some weight in and of itself. When someone speaks to you, directs words to you, it's a way of knowing you exist. As heuristics go, it's pretty simplistic, but you take what you can get.

This is not an attractive truth to have proof of. He vaguely resents Rick for providing it.

He's extremely aware of how pathetic he is.

Then, of course, there's _something_.

That’s seven. Word Seven—he plunges into the plain fact of the number as if it can protect him from something. _Something_. Protect him from _that_. If he resents Rick for providing proof of his own existence, he's downright enraged about this—except it's a dull kind of rage, bloodless and gray as a corpse, just as shambling and stupid. Rage used to make him feel powerful; it was a nauseating kind of power, but again: you take what you can get. Rage has always been better than terror, than helplessness, and in particular it's always been better than pain. The world breaks you; you break it right back. It was what he knew how to do. You scream. You swing an axe at someone, although naturally without any intention of actually making contact. You punch a wall. You beat a walker’s head in with a golf club until the thing snaps in your bloody hands.

You pull a trigger and you blow a murdering bitch’s brains out.

_You lost something._

He knows what Rick is trying to do. Rick is shit at subtlety—not that being better at it would conceal anything here. But Rick is about as tactful as a fucking sledgehammer and always has been. Daryl knows there's no harm intended. Quite the opposite. He knows it's meant well.

The utility of _meaning well_ is extravagantly limited.

Sun pounding behind his eyes. Somehow it's taken up residence in his head, and it's blisteringly hot and relentless. Another sledgehammer, smashing against the insides of his skull, and he keeps walking and takes it.

Fuck you, Rick. Just _fuck you._

He shoots Rick a glance. Smallest one possible. Rick is filthy, sweat-crusted shirt plastered to his skin, hair and beard matted and much longer than they were. He’s a fucking wreck. They all have that in common. The baby is cradled against his chest and somehow that only makes everything worse. The baby herself is looking at him expectantly, awaiting his response. All at once it's as though _everyone_ is looking at him, swinging around in their tracks to stare at him, although they don't stop moving.

That's not new. It's been like that for three fucking weeks. They're all staring at him. They all saw what they saw.

Like Rick, they know.

_I didn't lose something. Don't you get it? Don't you fucking get anything? That was some other sorry asshole. That wasn't me._

_I never had anything to lose_.

The baby fusses softly, and it's like the most horrid kind of reprieve. “She's hungry,” he mutters and instantly feels like a goddamn idiot, because it's obvious and Rick knows that too and there's nothing either of them can do about it now.

Can't go on a run. There's nowhere to run to.

 _We ain't losin’ nobody else_.

“She's okay.” Rick takes a breath, nods minutely as if emphasizing. “She's gonna be okay.”

Jesus Christ, the dumbass believes it.

Rick, he's learned in the years they've been together, is capable of believing far more than six impossible things long before breakfast. Once it was almost endearing. And he got it. He understood why Rick was like that. You don't get so far in a world like this unless you can do some serious lying.

Daryl has always been the worst liar.

The rage dissipates like the water they don't have evaporating under the glare of that ruthless sun. The gray is all that remains. This is equilibrium.

If he says anything after that, if either of them do, he never remembers it.

~

Maggie says he can _rest now._

That doesn't mean he does.

He crawls into a corner as far away from everyone else as he can get, gathers some relatively dry straw into something in the vague territory of a nest and tries to settle into it. It itches, pokes him in the side and the back of his neck and somehow works up under his vest and shirt to scratch at his spine. Long before the world ended, he grew accustomed to bedding down in places most people probably wouldn't be able to bear except at their most exhausted—not only bare floors and piles of leaves but greasy concrete, cold pavement, moist dirt, hollows in rotting logs, gravelly earth. In chilly rain. More than once in the midst of snow flurries. Straw in a barn should be positive luxury, given what they've been recently dealing with, but it's driving him fucking insane, and finally he abandons his escalating thrashing and sits up, scrubbing his face and beating back the weary croak of a scream twisting in his throat.

Little kids get so tired that all they can do is cry. Thing is, that urge doesn't go away with age.

“Y’alright?”

Dawn light is starting to seep in through the cracks in the walls and roof, and though it's dim and thin, it's abruptly too bright and he squints up into it, and at the shape casting a shadow between them. He knows this shape, because he knows all of them so well by now, but although he's not certain why, the voice isn't what he would expect.

No false confidence, like before. No pompous bullshit about _get up and go to war._ Also no calm. It's a shaky voice, watery at the edges, and it sounds more like he feels than he's heard Rick sound in…

In two weeks. At least. When Ty died? Maybe then. He doesn't remember.

Rick doesn't have the baby. Daryl turns his head and looks across to the other side of the barn, where Carl is huddled with her in his lap, his chin resting on the top of her head.

Back at Rick. Rick’s arms look so strange empty.

Why Rick is asking this. Because it's easier than thinking about whether he’s all right, and the answer to that particular question is as obvious as any. One wonders why any of them bother to talk anymore. Why he does, anyway. Why they're talking to each other, when as far as Daryl is concerned they said all there was to say weeks ago.

About her. About everything.

Which was nothing.

He shakes his head.

“I know.” Rick doesn't wait for invitation or permission, because of course he doesn't. He sinks into a crouch and then turns awkwardly to lean against the wall next to Daryl, his knees drawn up and his hands dangling loose between them, his head fallen back. His eyes are open and that thin light is falling into them; they appear leached of color, a dirty white rather than the blue they should be.

Such deep lines in his face. So much gray in his beard.

_Man, when did we get so old._

Rick swallows. Beneath ragged facial hair too thin to be proper beard and too thick to be stubble, his adam’s apple bobs.

“You got us here,” he murmurs after a while. “You know that too.”

Daryl would like very much to laugh. Even a breath. Scoffing, like he used to do out of habit whenever anyone said anything like this. Or he could nod, which was always harder but served well enough. Non-committal, acknowledging what was said rather than whatever truth it might or might not contain. But neither of those things come. Instead he looks at Rick and then looks away, and every cell in his body moans for sleep.

Or whatever form oblivion cares to take.

“Hey. You did.” Rick sounds steadier. He lowers his head, leans forward slightly, and then his hand is on Daryl’s, his thumb brushing the raw, blistered crater, and the delicate scab flakes loose and Daryl hisses, twitches backward.

So he _can_ still feel.

Not comforting.

Rick is peering down at it even as Daryl pulls it against his chest, something mutinous and ugly surging in him. _Stop it. Stop looking at me. It’s none of your fucking business so_ stop.

“What happened?”

Daryl bites down on the inside of his cheeks. Copper bursts sweet onto his tongue, and Rick won't stop. He lifts his chin at Daryl’s hand, and when he speaks it's so soft that no one else can possibly hear it, even in a space devoid of sound but for hoarse breathing and the obscenely cheerful twittering of birds outside.

“You did that, didn't you?”

He gazes at Rick in silence, pulling hard on his own fingers. His knuckles crack. _If you were really my brother you would stop torturing me and let me get on with torturing myself._

Actually, no. If Rick is torturing him, Rick is behaving exactly as a brother should. At least in Daryl’s own experience.

“Alright,” Rick breathes. “Alright.” And finally— _finally_ —he turns his awful face away and his eyelids flutter closed.

The light moves on across the floor and leaves them be.

He doesn't know how much later it is. But it's later enough that he's beginning to be sure Rick is out cold, when Rick speaks again.

“You should try to sleep.”

Grunt. “Been tryin’.”

“Yeah, well, try again.” Hint of a smile hidden under all that scraggly beard. That quiver has returned to Rick’s voice, and it's in the smile as well. He's on the raggedy edge, Daryl thinks. Seen him like this before, but it's been some time. Since before Atlanta. He's holding it together, but he's inches from coming apart at the seams.

“You first.”

Rick laughs. It sounds like the laugh Daryl would produce if he could: anemic and as dry as the drought that's just broken. “How about we go together?”

No fucking idea what to say to that. It’s another sentence for another time, uttered by another person entirely. It's too light, even with the quiver, and it's too close, too easy. As if it's that simple. As if only half of what's wrong is wrong.

But it's also fair enough.

Another grunt. “Whatever.”

Beside him, gradual as the taper of the rain, he senses Rick loosening. Slipping away. For him, maybe, it really is that easy. Should be jealous of that, perhaps, but all he feels is a fresh wave of weariness—which lifts him this time, bears him up and seems to carry him out to more open water, away from the shore of consciousness and its treacherous rocks. He doesn't sleep, not precisely, but he does drift for a bit, and it's better than nothing. It's not oblivion, but he does forget, a little.

When a sudden scatter of voices—excited, alarmed—jerks them both awake, in the seconds before he's on his feet, he perceives that his temple was resting against Rick’s shoulder, warm puffs of Rick’s breath across the crown of his head.

_We go together._

Sometimes, yeah. Sometimes they do.


	2. the black clouds I’m hanging, this anchor I’m dragging

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _In your ruined shirt, on the last day, while the bruise won’t heal, and the stain stays put, the red light streaming in from everywhere at once. Your broken ribs, the back of your head, your hand to mouth or hand to now, right now, like you mean it, like it’s splitting you in two. Now look at the lights, the lights._
> 
> \- Richard Siken, “You Are Jeff”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oh God, now Siken’s gotten involved. We’re all doomed.
> 
> ❤️

It's probably ridiculous, but something he's been giving more and more thought to is what's going to happen with cigarettes.

They're almost all stale. They've been stale for a while; he started noticing it a few months into their stay at the prison, and it's only been getting worse from there. They're too dry, tasteless or tasting straight-up unpleasant, and the ones he's found that aren't dry have absorbed the combined odor-flavor of, at best, a dank basement. At worst, decaying flesh, and no matter how desperate he gets for nicotine, he’ll stop short of that.

One has to maintain some standards. After all, they're how we stay human.

He gazes at the one pinched between his fingers, glowing ruddy orange in the twilight. All up and down the street, the lights are coming on, sucking up the sunlight they've spent the day absorbing. They can't see the stars as well here, though it's far from the skyglow Atlanta always threw across the clouds, and it bothers him. A tremendous number of things about the Safe Zone bother him, but while the light and in particular the amount of it has never occupied the number one slot, it's up there.

He misses the prison so fucking much.

Except no, that's not quite right. He misses how the prison made him feel.

Anyway, cigarettes. He's considered pushing out further into the state, trekking south; there have to be tobacco fields growing uncultivated. If he can bring back some seeds, maybe even some whole plants, get them going here and process the leaves. Roll his own. He's done it before.

Stupid shit to be focusing on. But he takes a drag and his mouth twists, and he can't cut it out. He has so few things that he enjoys as actual luxuries. He has so few things that he enjoys, period. Surely he's allowed this.

Only it's not merely a luxury. Uncomfortable, the moment a couple of days ago when he realized that his fingertips were tingling and he was even more snappish than usual. On the porch right after, drawing the smoke into his lungs and holding it there, and feeling all of it ease.

He hates the idea of needing it.

Hell. Might go the exact opposite direction and quit. He doesn't give a fuck about cancer, because this is a world in which dying from cancer is a happy goddamn ending, but he knows a thing or two about _dependence_.

It's all over the place, that. All around him. All these people need shit they can't possibly hold onto, and if they lose it, he doesn't see them lasting, because they've never had to do without.

But good sweet lord, a fresh smoke would be mind-blowing.

Creak of the screen door and footsteps behind him. He doesn't turn. Truth is, he's been anticipating the sound of those steps, not with any desire but with a tired sense of inevitability. He and Aaron and their unexpected new acquaintance walked in on what they did, and now there are some uncomfortable conversations that have to be had. Not that he's inclined to take part in any of them, but once again he's on the sidelines for some things that make him uneasy, and about which he can do nothing.

Rick will do whatever he does.

Dark shape moving at the edge of his vision. Daryl glances up, grunts. “Talk to your buddy?”

“Yeah. He's got quite a story to tell.”

“Figured.” Pause. “What about the other?”

“Pete?”

Long silence. Long, long. Daryl lets it be; Rick doesn't respond well to prodding, and anyway Daryl has never been the prodding type. Instead he flicks the smoldering cigarette butt onto the front walk and picks at the frayed hem of his pants, the equally frayed shoelace binding it to his ankle. There are plenty of spare clothes in this place, in all sizes. He could replace the whole outfit if he wanted. He doesn't want. He consented to washing it, along with his body, and that's about as far as he’ll go, and if anyone asked him why…

Doesn't matter.

“They all get that it had to happen,” Rick says finally. Tiredly. This isn't the man he saw pirouetting along the bloody border of psychosis before Michonne took him out for his own good. This man pulled himself back—or rather, was pulled and has managed to remain there.

For the present.

Daryl shoots him another glance. Rick is leaning against the porch rail on his elbows, hands folded and back bent, shoulders more than a little slumped. From inside, rising indistinct voices that quickly subside. Michonne is one of them. This is going to be a weird fucking night. This is going to be a weird few days, in the midst of days that are already hopelessly weird, and Daryl has no doubt that they'll manage, because they always do, but as for what the other side of this whole business looks like…

“What happens now?”

“Not sure.” Rick scrubs a hand over his jaw. He was shaved clean for a while but a shadow of stubble is creeping back in. It's good to see. Somehow reassuring, and not just because it's a return to what Daryl is way more used to.

That Rick wasn't real. All prettied up, all trimmed neat. The _Constable_. Some respectable motherfucker who never rips out people’s throats with his teeth. Daryl would never admit this, not under anything except the most extreme duress, but it was a positive relief to come back and find both figurative and literal blood on Rick’s hands.

Apparently they're all committed to pretending normality where at least a few things are concerned, but it would be ideal, for a number of reasons, to minimize those.

“I guess,” Rick continues, and sighs, bowing his head for a few seconds before he lifts it once more and stares out at the gathering darkness. “I guess… we just find a way to make it all work.”

Daryl looks at him for a while. His own fingers are still working their fidgeting way over his hem, worrying strings loose and rolling them together, pulling at them until they start to unravel. Rick’s face is only partially visible, a third in light and the rest in shadow. Tight set of his jaw, the sagging at the corner of his mouth. His expression is otherwise unreadable. His eyes are glittering, and not in the way they often do—with excitement, with sharply focused aggression, with mad inspiration. Daryl isn't certain how to categorize this glitter.

For a long time, it was as though very little was changing. Now it's all changing so fast.

“What about that woman?” Daryl clears his throat; this is suddenly awkward, and he's doubtful that he should even be asking about this, if it's any of his business. But it did—it _does_ —appear to be more than a purely personal matter. There might not be any such thing as a _purely personal matter_ anymore. “Jessie? What's the deal there?”

“Yeah.” Huff of a laugh—wry. Unhappy. “I think… I don't think anything's gonna happen there. I don't think that's a good idea.”

“You like her, though.” He's turning away, fumbling in his pocket for another smoke. Jesus, why won't he let this go? Clearly it matters, but right now? At this moment, with her husband's corpse barely cool, even if he was a complete piece of shit? “Don't you.”

It's not a question. But Rick makes a noise that Daryl takes as affirmation.

“So?”

“It's not a good idea,” Rick says again, and sighs. “It's complicated. Shit’s complicated enough right now.”

This is unusual prudence, Daryl thinks with vague amusement. Especially since they got here. Sure, Rick is the one dragging him off people, but even so.

“It's good that you killed him.” Cigarette between his fingers; flick-flare of the lighter. He inhales deep, blows smoke at the moths hurling themselves at the porch light. “Ain't no loss.”

_Might have liked to do it myself._

Another rough laugh. “Yeah. Yeah, no argument there.”

Then more silence. It stretches out and deepens, broken only by a dog barking in the distance and someone calling after it. Kid, sounds like. Clink of dishes from the open kitchen window of the house next door. Somewhere, Aaron and Eric are having a nice dinner in their nice house—nice even with the carnage so fresh, because even here, you keep going. You absorb the damage and the dirt and you move on. And Aaron and Eric will be able to preserve their essential Niceness, even in the face of that carnage, because that's the kind of people they are. Really, it's not so facile. Or it isn't always. It's not so stupid.

It's just stupid to need it. It's stupid to depend.

He's guessing Aaron has more sense than that, if anyone here does.

Scruff of Rick’s boots, another sigh as he pushes back from the railing and straightens. Twilight has transitioned into true night, and this is where Rick goes back inside to greet what's waiting for him in there—also in the face of this carnage, even carnage in which Rick has had the most intimate kind of hand, he has his boy and his baby, and if he's going to _make it work,_ he has a foundation on which to build.

But he's not going inside. He's walking the few feet to the porch steps and lowering himself down, beside and one step up. Again he leans forward, and although Daryl isn't looking directly at him, he finds himself studying what he can see.

Rick reaches down to brush something off his shin. There's blood dried under the nails of his fore and middle fingers. You'd examine the rest of him, you'd never know what you were really dealing with.

_We’re killers. We are, and now the rest of them see it, whether they want it or not._

It's complicated, all right.

“Thanks. For bringing Morgan back safe.”

Daryl shakes his head. “Guy didn't need our help with nothin’.”

“Needed your help finding this place.” Rick nudges Daryl’s hip with the toe of his boot. “Either way. Thanks.”

Shrug. “‘s what I was out there for.”

“I wasn't sure about that job of yours. Think maybe I'm coming around.”

Hint of a smile now in that sagging mouth, though it's a crooked one, like the seed of a wince. Rick looks like he's in pain, Daryl realizes. Has for a good while now. Not sadness, not weariness, not even anything acute, but actual bone-deep _pain,_ the kind that comes with a badly sprained muscle or a torn tendon. Pain that lasts for months, that resists healing, that grinds you down every day and makes everything else so nigh-unbearably hard.

Daryl doesn't look in many mirrors these days. Avoids them, truth be told. And yet.

“You should stop sleeping on the floor,” Rick says quietly.

Everything stops. The moths in their obsessive, borderline suicidal love affair with the bulb. The breeze. Those plates, that dog. The distant hoot of a barred owl cuts off as suddenly as if someone's shot it out of the damn tree. Daryl’s breath, jabbing a finger down through his diaphragm. Even the smoke from the cigarette seems to halt its lazy curl into the air.

Slowly, he turns. “Huh?”

“I didn’t mean—” Rick looks slightly abashed, blinking and licking his lips. “It's your business, you sleep where you want. But like you do now, on the floor by the front door. Like you’re ready to grab your stuff and bug out any second.”

 _What stuff?_ He frowns. “The fuck, you think that's a bad idea? You think we ain't never gonna do that?”

 _You arrogant dumbass, have you learned_ nothing?

“I know we might. I know that. You know I know that.” Hand careful on his shoulder; he stiffens but doesn't pull away. “But, I mean…” Rick Grimes Head Tilt. There's something so punchable about those sometimes. “Is that why you're there? Is that really why?”

“Fuck you, man.” But there's no heat in it. It's plain resignation. He doesn't want to fight about this. He doesn't want to fight about anything. He doesn't want to fight.

Not with Rick. Not right now.

“Yeah, alright.”

That hand hasn’t moved. It's strong, long fingers fitting against his collarbone; he knows the power of that hand to restrain him, and in fact, come to think, that's the last time he felt it. It was fast and hard and then it was over, and he was pacing back and forth, biting back animal snarls, and would have charged past Rick and started the whole thing up again except for those hands and what they can do.

Now it squeezes him. Once, but lingering.

Then it's gone.

“You got that room next to mine. It's been yours if you wanted it. Still is.”

“Never asked you for that,” he says, and it comes out in something close to a growl, which he immediately wishes he could take back. But it's true. When they were breaking down the living quarters in the two houses set aside for them—both disorientingly spacious, or so it seemed to him at the time—no one ever consulted him. They took what rooms they wanted, and without asking him his opinion, they left that one vacant. It's not big by the standards of the others; Carl’s across the hall is larger, and Michonne’s at the rear of the house is larger still. It's not lavishly furnished: there's a single bed, a dresser, a nightstand and a lamp, a bookshelf. A closet, not walk-in. All empty, all bare. The room is bright, and the sound echoes flatly off all those exposed surfaces. He walked into it that second day, when it became clear that it was marked as his, and he stood there for a moment or two, and then he turned around and walked the hell out again and didn't go back. Stuck with his blanket and his couple of sofa cushions on the floor. No, it's not especially comfortable, but it's preferable.

He never asked for it. But then again, he was consulted about very little regarding any of this.

“If you change your mind,” Rick repeats, even quieter. “It's not going anywhere.”

And before Daryl can come up with any other retort, Rick is pushing to his feet without another word, receding from the periphery of Daryl’s vision. The boards creak, and then the door again, and he's alone.

Burst of pain as the cigarette singes his fingers, and he hurls it into the dark, hissing.

The burn on his hand is healing nicely. He hasn't given it any company.

Doesn't mean he hasn't thought about that too.

~

Much later, he sits in his nest by the door, back against the wall, listening to the sleeping house and turning the knife over and over in his hands.

The lights are off, and the glow of the lamps outside doesn't reach him where he currently is. But the moon is high and nearly full, and a beam of it has been easing across the floor until it's reached him and settled there—on his hands, and the knife’s softly tanned sheath. In sunlight it's tawny, the color of a cougar’s hide, but in moonlight it's a plain silver-gray, and the blade, when he unsheaths it, is the same hue only imbued with a sharp brilliance that's difficult to look at.

Not merely because it's so bright.

He runs the pad of his forefinger up and down the edge of it, presses against the tip until the skin is near to breaking. He does this with slow fascination and a wrench beneath his lungs that he endures, like he's endured everything else. He doesn't want to look, but he forces himself to do so. He chews at his lip and traces that beautifully cruel line, over and over, and he feels as if he's treading that edge.

One tiny teeter, one push, and he's over.

Did he think about it, that day sitting under the tree and staring at the barn? Of course he did. He would have been crazy _not_ to think about it. That delicate, pale scar slashed across her wrist; he didn't see her do it, didn't really get a look at the thing until it was already pretty well healed, but in that moment, too late, he thought he got it. Only for him, it wasn't about wanting to die.

He doesn't want to die. Though the notion of being dead is more than a little attractive.

Almost made it happen, in that car.

Would have been worth it. For Aaron, getting him back safe. To his home and his dinner table, to his people even if they're not quite easy with him, and to the man who loves him. Would have been worth it, because _she_ would have said so.

_Good people._

He thought about making himself bleed. Then he decided that her blade was too good for that. The one thing he has left of her deserved better than his pathetic, self-indulgent bullshit.

His stale cigarette, on the other hand.

He slides the knife back into its sheath and heaves a shuddering breath, tucks it under a pillow and buries his face in his hands.

~

Rage.

Not weary. Not dull. Rage like a volcano, like a fucking inferno; rage like a house on fire. There's savage joy in it, in the way he plunges into it and plunges toward the convenient target of it, teeth bared and fingers hooked into claws as he pounces and takes him down. It's so much simpler this way. He's not fooling himself about what he might be, he's not wasting his time trying to build something that he’ll have to watch burn to the ground and he's not pissing away his hope trying to _make it work._ It takes no faith to destroy.

It's safe.

The rage envelopes him, folds him into its vicious arms, and for a smooth, pristine second he knows he could kill this man and feel utterly no remorse. So they kick him out after this, banish him to the wilderness. Maybe worse. So fucking what. If it comes to the wilderness, that's where he came from and that's where he clearly belongs.

So after this it's merely clearer.

Trying to get back to that, perhaps. He's heard of people who pull guns on cops in the belief that the cops will oblige by shooting them down.

 _Cops,_ sure. Cops who seize you and drag you backward, wiry strength all around you, grating admonishments in your ear. And for a fraction of another second he went loose in that grip as the spring wound up inside him almost uncoiled and freed itself, and it would have been as easy as killing to turn, let go into that warm restraining hold, loosen and collapse and allow Rick to just…

To just take him. To have him.

Whatever the fuck that means.

Rick dragged him off and he wrestled free, recoiled like the Colt. Made like he might come at the guy again. Pulling the gun on the cop once more. Not for shooting. Not for that at all.

Trying to get something else from him.

Only there was more, wasn't there? If he travels further back. If he can bear it. There was something else. When Rick took hold and stopped him from doing something horrible, it wasn't the first time. Only it was reversed. That time before— _three weeks since Atlanta_ —it wasn't to stop him.

It wasn't that at all.

_Daryl. Daryl, we have to get out. Now. I'm so sorry, but we have to._

_You have to leave her._

_You have to let go._

~

He spasms awake into the pre-dawn darkness, clutching a pillow. The thing is soaked, sodden, itching salt on his skin. He thrusts it away from him and scrambles up to sit, gasping, shoulders jammed against the wall and every muscle tight like something is coming at him. Like he has to _grab his stuff and bug out_. 

The moon has set. The front hall and living room are gradually emerging into discrete forms. He gazes blankly at them and swipes shaking hands down his face, damp strands of hair sticking to his knuckles.

Someone is standing in the kitchen doorway and looking at him.

With sickening dreaminess, he looks back. He's still too sunk in the dream to cringe away from that attention, braced by the awful, stupid courage of shock. Meeting Rick’s eyes and, for a terrible instant, ready to lunge at him. Punish him for daring to be here. For the audacity of his act of witness. For the insult of his pity.

_It’s not pity. You know that._

Okay, so here's the truth.

On the ride out of Atlanta, he didn't meet Rick’s eyes. That was because he couldn't have. Rick wouldn't have been able to see him. Rick couldn't drive, for the constant density of his tears. He sat there in the front passenger’s seat as Michonne took the wheel, and Daryl could only see one side of his face and that only barely, but he saw that shine on Rick’s cheeks.

Rick’s flat expression. But through that flatness, he wept for hours. By then Daryl’s eyes were so dry they felt cracked.

Looking at him now. Rick is a featureless shape, unmoving. He might not even breathe.

Then he's gone, and he might never have been there at all.

~

Although he couldn't explain it and doesn't much care to try, although he's fully prepared to take the head off anyone dumb enough to speak to him about it, the next night Daryl is up in that room.


	3. the sails of memory rip open in silence

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _O how he loves you, darling boy. O how, like always, he invents the monsters underneath the bed to get you to sleep next to him, chest to chest or chest to back, the covers drawn around you in an act of faith against the night._
> 
> \- Richard Siken, “You Are Jeff”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy Pride! Hopefully I’ll get this thing updated at least one more time during this month of queerful joy.
> 
> And by the way, the Siken lines shouldn’t be taken to suggest that Rick orchestrates any of this. He doesn’t (or DOES HE?) They just resonated.
> 
> As always, thanks so much for reading and please let me know your thoughts and feelings. ❤️

He doesn't settle in easily. He doesn't settle in at all.

He's grumpy about it. Knows it's obvious, that while he didn't eat dinner with everyone else this evening, anyone who's run into him since then can tell. That he's cranky, stewing, and he's feeling petulant and childish about it and therefore is even crankier.

Much later, shoveling down a plate of cooling leftover chicken and potatoes once most of the other occupants of the house have cleared out and/or retreated to their own rooms, he sits on the floor by his gear and moodily eyes the stairs. It's getting on to ten-thirty. He can hear Michonne moving around in her room, but Carl’s and Rick’s are silent. As he's licking the last of the grease off his fingers, it comes to him that he's waiting for the absence of all potential witnesses because it feels as though he's giving in to something. Losing some kind of fight, and displaying weakness that might open him up to other undesirable things.

Someone encouraging him to make himself more presentable, perhaps, more aggressively than Carol has. Someone encouraging him to attend parties and make friends. Maybe to adopt better posture. Stand up straight and quit slouching so damn much.

He almost smiles at that. Almost.

Mostly, he thinks, he doesn't want _Rick_ to see him cave. And it's stupid that he should care, that he should entertain for one moment the idea that he is losing some kind of battle, because Rick never suggested that he take the bedroom as a part of some kind of power play. It wasn't anything remotely like that. Rick can be a manipulative sonofabitch when he wants to, and Daryl has felt his share of that twist-and-pull, but that's exactly why he knows last night was different. Last night was, if anything, something he finds less preferable than power plays or manipulation, because at least those would be moves he'd know how to counter.

Or he'd know them for what they are.

Rick was just worried about him. Doesn't have to be any more complicated than that, and indeed it wasn't.

And shit, when did he get so paranoid about his own people? Aaron was one thing, but he didn't _know_ Aaron, and suspicion struck him as only proper and healthy. But he should be able to trust Rick. He should be able to trust all of them.

That's not what it's about. It's about how all his gates have rusted shut, and he's afraid of the howling screech they might make if one of them grinds open. Better, safer for everyone involved, to keep them closed.

But he's going to take the fucking room. Doesn't even know why.

Except he looks at the handle of the knife protruding from beneath his pathetic little pile of ragged clothes, and he does. He knows precisely why. He's an idiot, but not to that extent.

He sighs, ducks his head. Takes his plate to the kitchen and returns, gathers up what few things he has, and in the quiet dimness he carries them upstairs to his room.

~

_His_.

Hardly anything has ever been his. Naturally everyone around him has kept few possessions of their own since the world fell apart; how and under what circumstances would they have been able to accumulate them in any real numbers? The prison, he supposes: people started to keep things in the prison. Shit they found on runs, traded for, gave to each other as gifts. Clothes, books, kids’ toys, jewelry and shampoo and fancy lotions. Or as simple as pretty stones. Once there was time and adequate space for it, it turned out there was still considerable appetite for luxuries, and when it came to luxuries there were more of those lying around than one might expect.

Of course, the bar for what you could consider _luxury_ was also a hell of a lot lower.

Anything that wasn't strictly necessary for survival; far as he was concerned—that counted. And he had his own. A couple of books, sure. Cigarettes, bet your ass. He never gave much of a shit about clothes, almost to the point of defiance against any perceived pressure to do so once it became possible, and Lord but is he feeling that again now in the keenest way. But he had the little things he liked. He never denied himself. What the hell did he have to prove? He had no virtue to cultivate or preserve. He wasn't a fucking monk.

He just didn't care a whole lot about anything. About any _things_.

Then they were all on the run again, and all that bullshit got blown to hell with the walls, flattened as sure as the fences and gates. Clinging to life by your goddamn splintering fingernails has a way of simplifying, of purifying. But now they're here, with walls and fences and gates again, and this house is already so full of wholly unnecessary stuff. More than the prison ever was. He can see there being more before long, because bullshit breeds bullshit, and he's worried about that.

He thinks. Easiest to assume that's mostly what he's feeling. The unease, as he sets the bundle he's made down on the bed and looks around.

It's small, and spare, and none of what he has will make it any less so. He can't decide whether or not that's comforting.

It looks like a kid’s room, it hits him all at once. A kid’s—or no, that's not right. It looks like a college dorm, or what he imagines a college dorm might look like, prior to the start of the semester and just as people are beginning to move in, before they fill the place up with posters and Christmas lights and textbooks and empty takeout containers. That leaves an unaccountably bad taste in his mouth, spikes semi-coherent resentment through him; he doesn't get it, doesn't totally get where it's come from, except that something like a memory is rising in him, back humped and shadowy as a surfacing whale—the reek of dry, old death and rotting money, sacharine peach schnapps gone sour and the adrenaline tang of sick rage on his tongue.

He sits down on the bed beside his bundle. The wood frame creaks. He stares at the small bedside lamp for a while.

The house is silent.

He's not going to string any fucking Christmas lights around the window. He's not going to paste up any shitty posters of bands or cars or women with huge fake tits spilling out of their bikinis. But he is going to find places for his pitiful collection of stuff.

Tomorrow. For now he's going to go the hell to sleep.

He doesn't remember slipping the knife under his pillow. But when he does sleep, it's there nonetheless.

~

He jerks awake in the thick dark, and for a few blank seconds he has no idea where he is.

That's not new, of course. Happened last night. Happens routinely—not every night, but it did plenty at the prison when they first got there, and on the road there's always a series of moments of muzzy confusion during which he struggles to remember where they bedded down last night and what happened to get them there. That didn't even start with the end of the world; he's never been in one place for long since he left home. Not knowing where he is—and having to suss it out through the haze of a hangover or a concussion—has long been at least half the rule.

But fear isn't part of that confusion. Not usually. Not even since they got here and his dreams have been horrorshows more often than anything else. Now, here in the dark with a scratchy blanket clutched in his hands, he's terrified. Sweating, panting levels of terrified, and he hasn't the first notion why.

Bed. Real bed. Not the prison. He sits up, ratty tee tugged around his torso and plastered to his skin, the legs of his shorts yanked high on his thighs. Through the open window comes the weird duet of a hooting owl and a barking dog, and that, plus the shadowy outlines of the furniture, slowly brings it back to him.

But his heart is still racing. He doesn't recall a nightmare. He woke himself up?

Or something did that for him?

He forces his breathing to slow and quiet, and listens. There's nothing, nothing except the owl and the dog, and he's about to go ahead and blame it all on his fucked-up self and try to find his way back into unconsciousness—

When he hears it.

No, he didn't wake himself up. At least not completely.

He sits absolutely motionless, head cocked. If he could see himself, he would call his aspect canine in and of itself. But for the moment he's lost all awareness of that. The entirety of his attention is focused outward—at the wall behind him.

And there it is again: a whimper, low and shuddering and muffled.

Not muffled enough.

The wall opposite him is shared with the second upstairs bathroom. The one nearest him—that one, he shares with Rick.

He sucks in a breath and holds it. There's a distinction between the noises people make when awake versus the ones they make in their sleep, and it's profoundly subtle but in spite of that it can be made if you know what to listen for. This is a sleep-sound, possibly containing the most basic elements of speech that hasn't survived the crossing of the dream-membrane. Rick, sleeping, and his dreams are unquiet.

Daryl doesn't believe he's ever heard this before. Not even at the worst of times, when every single one of them had ample reason to cry out in their sleep.

Except that's not quite true. He's heard it before. Once and once only: Back at the prison after Lori died, after Rick wandered out into the wilderness of his own broken mind and somehow made it back, and he was functional enough but it didn't take close inspection to detect that the man wasn't well yet. He brought ghosts back with him, and in the night they haunted him—or they must have, but Daryl didn't hear the evidence of that haunting.

Except for one night.

Their prison cells shared a wall then, too. Thick cinderblock; if there had been doors, very likely no sound would have escaped to be heard in the first place. But all they had were threadbare sheets to serve as curtains, so no one was able to conceal much from everyone in the block. Later that became a source of amusement, because whenever anyone decided to get up to something with anyone else—and they didn't look for privacy in any of the dark corners available to them elsewhere—you could hear them at it no matter how discreet they tried to be. And people messed around. Of course they did. That's what people want to do, one way they remind themselves they're alive, and ultimately no embarrassment or smirks the next day at breakfast is going to stop them.

Even if he's never really felt much need for that kind of reminder, and even if part of him was always vaguely uncomfortable about those sounds and what they meant. Even when it was funny.

But if you could hear fucking, you could hear other things, so that one night when Rick’s ghosts got too rough with him, Daryl heard. Moans that clearly had nothing to do with pleasure, the squeak of the cot as a body twitched fitfully on it, and fragments of a name.

Hurting in those sounds. It hurt to listen to them. Daryl lay there and gazed up at the ceiling and wished he could be anywhere else, and somehow, although he had no way of being certain, he knew he was the only one who could hear it. He was solely privy to Rick’s suffering—and that meant he was the only one who could have done anything about it.

Do what? What the fuck was he supposed to do? Get up and go in there and shake him? Jostle him awake? Mutter an apology and creep away again?

Stay?

He squeezed his eyes shut and tried like hell to sleep, and eventually Rick subsided back into the depths of whatever dreams were tormenting him, and maybe his silence was because the dreams had stopped being tormenting.

But Daryl didn't think so.

Sooner or later everything comes back around, doesn't it? So here he is again, lying in the dark and listening as Rick’s inward darkness wrenches at him, while the rest of the house slumbers obliviously on. Because it's not subsiding. It's continuing, whimpers deepening into something more like sobs, and just as before, hidden in his voice, those jagged shards of a name.

Back then, it wasn't difficult to guess what the name was. Now, though.

They've lost so many people. It could be anyone.

He could do what he did before. In all likelihood he will. Keep himself to himself, recognize and accept that what has Rick prisoner isn't something Daryl can free him from, remain in his bed and wait until the sounds dissipate like a storm. Perhaps eventually even sleep again.

Each and every one of them is haunted, after all.

But his fear-sweat is still damp on his skin. His head is still buzzing with fight-or-flight chemicals. He's still trembling at the edges, and the room, which felt so blandly cramped when he first entered it, now seems vast and cavernous. The corners are full of mouths yawning open to swallow him, and Rick is only getting louder; he wants to flip over and fling his pillow onto his head, jam it over his ears until it stops—because it's as if he's being turned inside out, all glistening flesh and exposed red muscle and pale tendon and bone exposed to the air, all by the relentless pressure of those _sounds_.

He's on his feet before he realizes it, and although he stalks to the door, once it's open he pads stealthy as a cat into the hall. The carpet runner is dense and soft beneath his bare feet, and he knows no one will hear him as he paces the few steps to Rick’s door.

He's half expecting it to be locked. It isn't. The knob turns easily and the door swings open.

Unlike his window, the curtains here are drawn shut, and he can scarcely see anything at all. Dim outlines only, mostly in the faint light from the hall. A wide bureau overlooked by an equally wide mirror, an armchair by the window. A king-size bed—and Rick’s blanket-tangled form is so small and sad and alone in it, and suddenly Daryl hates that as much as he's ever hated anything.

He's crazy. This is bullshit. It's not his business. But he's easing the door closed until he hears the click of the latch, and then he's crossing the expanse of floor between him and Rick, and standing over him, squinting and studying him in what little illumination there is.

Rick is indeed twitching and twisting under the covers, only the top of his bare upper body visible, and something in the flex of his muscles cries panic. Not merely fear: actual _panic,_ and it's even plainer in the contortion of his features, his mouth pulled into a strained grimace. And now that Daryl is here he's at a loss as to what to do except what he's doing, bending over Rick’s shaking form and laying a hand over his shoulder, muttering his name.

Another thing he's half expecting is for it to take a while and significantly more effort, bringing Rick out of what has him. If his own struggling wasn't sufficient to free himself—but as with the door, it's easy to a degree which shocks him.

Rick jerks and shoves himself up on his elbows, every muscle tense and vibrating, his eyes wide. Shining. Daryl can somehow see that they aren't entirely focused.

Shit, he might not be completely awake.

Good. That's good. Gives him cover for a prudent retreat, and if he's lucky Rick won't even remember this tomorrow. He starts to straighten, starts to pulls back his hand—

And Rick’s own hand clamps sharply over his wrist, grip so tight it's almost painful, and his whisper is as shaky as his body.

“Don't.” Rick swallows. “Don't go.”

Daryl freezes, staring at him.

If Rick isn't fully awake, it might be possible to soothe him back down, escape once Rick is mostly asleep again. Shit, it's possible if not probable that Rick doesn't even know who he is, isn't even really seeing him at all, and perhaps he can use that for additional cover, convince Rick of a comforting presence that will linger after Daryl is gone. But before he can put any of this to the test, Rick is licking his lips and whispering hoarsely again.

“Don't leave me. Daryl. Don't leave me alone.” He hauls in a trembling breath. “Please.”

His eyes still don't appear focused. He still might not be totally conscious. All that might be true.

But, as his gut sinks toward his feet, Daryl knows he isn't going anywhere.

“Alright,” he murmurs. Croaks. “Alright.”

Gingerly, not attempting to pry Rick’s hand away, he sits down sideways on the bed, hands loose in his lap, and looks at the man who’s begging him not to go.

Rick is lowering himself back down, though his eyes are still huge and scared. The blankets have pooled around his waist, and Daryl can see the sheen of sweat on his skin. _Just like me,_ he thinks, and fights back a shiver.

For an immeasurable, dreamy time, nothing. Daryl is beginning to wonder if it might be over, when Rick speaks again.

“I'm sorry.”

_No_. So weary. He doesn't want this. “Ain't got nothin’ to be sorry for.”

Rick breathes a laugh. “You don't think?” He's silent again, and Daryl can sense a kind of musing in it. “Brother, if I made a list of everything I've got to be sorry for, it'd be as long as your goddamn arm.”

_Not this._ Abruptly it's difficult to look at him. The grip on Daryl’s wrist has loosened slightly but hasn't released, and Daryl gazes down at it, those long fingers and the strength in them, and once more considers the fact that most—most, though not all—other people who tried to touch him with this kind of persistence would be in some serious trouble.

But this is okay.

Even if it's awful, it's okay.

“Don’t,” Daryl says softly. “Just… Just don’t.”

Rick rolls his head to the side—a horizontal inclination, assent. He exhales. “I just see their faces. Y’know? All of ‘em. Every night.”

Daryl simply nods. No point in denying it: he does know, and he knows so hideously well. A cascade of faces, a crushing waterfall of them that only ever swells as if being fed by a constant upstream flood, and now for him there's one face especially, one that won't leave him be no matter how desperately he pleads with her—and he doesn't even want her to, and she'd be well aware of that.

All the rest of them could abandon him and flow away, and he would still cling to her though she burns him.

“I think… Maybe if I tried harder,” Rick continues, still barely above a whisper. “Maybe if I did something different, made better choices. Went with better plans. Let some things go, held onto other ones. Maybe it would've made a difference.” He smiles, a thin pained line. “Or maybe it wouldn't have. Hell of it is? I'll never know.”

Daryl bites down on the edges of his tongue, head slumping between his shoulders. There's something nightmarish about this too. The sense of everything swinging back on itself, and not merely because this is a remixed replay of the prison. It's what Rick is saying, the shit coming out of his mouth, the undeniability of it and the way Daryl has no answer whatsoever. She would have, he's virtually certain. _She_ would have known what to say, what to do. But she's not here, and he's only himself, and he has nothing to offer to this.

Can't make any of it better.

Rick lets him go, closes his eyes. “Sorry,” he repeats. “Sorry I grabbed you. You can go back to bed now.”

So now he has official permission. He can go—and he should. He's accomplished what he came in to do and there's nothing more to be done here. Rather than sit and marinate in that truth, he should take it away with him and do what he can to forget it for a few hours until dawn.

He doesn't move. He raises his head and gazes at Rick, and it's as if his limbs no longer belong to him, or at least have launched a revolt and aren't going to obey his orders.

And after another few seconds, Rick slides back a little.

Enough to accomodate another body.

As far as _plans_ go, his rebel limbs appear to be operating according to their own, and he's turning, pulling his legs up, and then he's lying down beside Rick Grimes, facing him with his arms tucked in against his chest like a kid, not quite able to breathe.

They've been closer than this. Plenty of times. Had to be, and whatever else he felt forced to say in the mean world before this meaner one, he's never needed to brush it off with gruff coughs of _no homo, right, man?_ They're out on the raggedy edge together. There are bigger things to worry about than proximity, if he was ever inclined to worry at all.

But _this_. He very nearly can't stand this, and he doesn't know _why,_ and he doesn't know if he’ll be able to sleep like this, with the slope of Rick’s naked shoulder and arm and the glitter of his eyes inches away.

So surely he’ll never be able to explain it. No way, not if he tried for years. He'll never be able to find the words for it, the language to take what he's feeling now and articulate it in any way that makes one iota of sense to him. It's beyond unintuitive. It's borderline unthinkable. Not that it's bad, not that it's horrifying or even especially troubling, but just that _he doesn’t understand._

How when Rick reaches across that space between them and closes a warm hand over Daryl’s hip, he's asleep in minutes, and he has no more dreams.

He doesn't understand.

Until he does.


	4. your shoulderblade, your spine were shorelines in the moonlight

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _It’s a puzzle: each piece, each room, each time you_   
>  _put your hand to the knob, your mouth to the hand, your ear to the_   
>  _wound that whispers._
> 
> _You’re in the hallway again. The radio is playing your favorite song._  
>  _You’re in the hallway. Open the door again. Open the door._
> 
> \- Richard Siken, “You Are Jeff”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is turning into such a slow goddamn burn, but I think that’s appropriate. 
> 
> Thank you so much for reading and commenting, writing has been tougher than usual lately (some big professional projects that don’t leave me much energy for fic) and your kind words help me keep going. ❤️

He wakes up alone.

Again, no idea where he is. But now it's bright, the curtains pulled wide and the sun streaming cheerfully through, and he hazily notes the way it's creeping across the bed toward him before he rolls over with a quiet groan and buries his head in the pillow.

Pillow. Not his pillow, not his bed; he didn't even spend a full night in it but now that he's relatively conscious he remembers the way it felt beneath him, too soft and too yielding although he recognized that by most standards it would be considered firm, and he also remembers the way it _smelled,_ and the smell is the kicker.

The bed he first lay down in last night smelled of dust and pressboard and foam, and absence. Lack of occupancy. It smelled sterile. It didn't bother him then, or not any more than anything else in that room bothered him, but he did notice it, because he notices everything. And like any information that might come into play later, even in ways he can't imagine, he filed it away.

So he has something to compare this scent to, and they don't match.

He doesn't open his eyes. Doesn't lift his head. But he goes briefly rigid as his mind surges into full awareness—of how his legs are tangled in the sheets, of how aside from that he's more physically comfortable than he has any right to be, of the voices drifting up to him from downstairs, and most of all of that _scent_.

Late last night, he went to bed with Rick Grimes.

Shouldn't be a big deal. He's thinking that very firmly as the fullness of the memory finally washes over him. He thought at the time that it wasn't as though they hadn't slept close before. But last night, no circumstances forced it. Last night, there was plenty of room. No one had to stand watch. He had his own space. Could have stayed there. It's somewhat astonishing that he didn't.

In his way, Rick called to him, and so he came.

And he stayed.

Hand on his wrist. Wide, stricken eyes meeting his in the dimness. The desperation in Rick’s hoarse whisper, the need—and that part was new. He's seen Rick in the context of all manner of extremity, but that part was definitely new.

He rolls onto his back and stares up at the ceiling, one arm slung over his brow to block the sun. How Rick was: unbound. Unconcealed. A little wild, maybe, to the extent that someone still half trapped in a dream can be so. It's not that Rick hides things from other people; it's that Rick hides things from _himself,_ by turns violently raw and banked down hard. He beats himself back until he explodes, and last night?

Last night Daryl witnessed a very small, very contained blast.

 _Fuck,_ he breathes, and closes his eyes again.

But it shouldn't be a big deal. Even with all the troubling novelty, it shouldn't. Rick was upset, asked him to stay, he stayed. Just that simple, and there doesn't have to be more to it than that. They've done shit for each other, held each other up when the world was beating them down, and really, wouldn't it have been weirder if he _hadn't_ stayed? Wouldn't that have been less like him and more worthy of note?

He sits up suddenly, scrubs his hands over his face and looks at the door for a while, until he gets his shit together enough to get out of bed and walk through it. He thinks he might be ready to face the day. Possibly.

Who the fuck is he kidding. He doesn't recall ever being ready for anything.

~

Shower. Showers are another thing that still feels like a novelty. Last time he had them was the prison, and after the prison he was lucky to get a chance and the energy to wash his fucking face in a stream. Most of the time didn't bother.

 _Until_.

And then, in the After. What the fuck was the point? Who would he have been trying to impress? He wore filth like a surly shield, and it was like the room had been initially: accepting what was on free offer would have somehow felt like giving in, surrendering in some struggle. And he knew it was stupid, knew he was being a fucking petty asshole, but that never stopped him before.

He did give in, eventually. Hasn't gotten used to it, standing under the spray and watching the soap swirling around his toes. Warm water; for some reason he can't bear to make it hot. Can barely manage warm. He won't examine why too carefully. He leans his forehead against the cool tile and feels the water trickling down his shoulders and back, dripping off his eyelashes and running off the end of his nose. The sunlight eases in through the frosted windowpanes and the steamed-up glass door of the stall and casts the falling droplets in dull white illumination. He watches it, eyes half-lidded, and presses his hands flat against the wall as if to push it away from him.

Not the first clue why he's letting his brain wander in fretful circles like he is. His brain is always fretful these days, even at the best of times, but this is another level. Not by much, but it is.

He's dimly aware that he's hungry. Might as well take care of that. He cuts off the water, dries himself as fast as he can. He doesn't like being naked. Never has. Clothes are better, safer. Protecting him from what?

Is there anything he doesn't need protection from, now?

He dresses with a kind of fierce determination, and goes downstairs to eat.

~

No one else is in evidence when he walks into the kitchen. Someone left out the remains—a couple of pancakes, three slices of bacon—and he knows implicitly that they were left out for him. He eats them cold, standing in front of the counter, washes them down with a glass oftasteless from-canned concentrate orange juice, tosses the plates in the sink. Stands there for another moment or two, looking at them, and realizes that he doesn't know what he's going todo with the rest of his day. As far as he's been told, Aaron has no plans to go out. No one is going out. Everyone is still reeling; he felt it in the air last night and he feels it now, even without having spoken to or seen anyone else. They got hit by a trauma, not an inconsiderable one, and he doesn't imagine these people are remotely used to trauma of this kind.

Jab of scorn, mean. Rick wasn't wrong to go apeshit at them like he did, before Michonne took him out. They're soft, fattened on leisure and safety, their hot showers and clean, shiny kitchens. They haven't even understood the degree to which that's the case, but in time they will. This is surely just the beginning of the end of the dream.

They'll learn what it means to lose people.

_The hell good is this, thinking this way? Stop the bullshit and go outside or something, Jesus fucking Christ._

He grits his teeth. Pats his pocket to make sure he has his smokes, and heads for the front door.

~

No one is in evidence outside either. The quiet hangs in the air, dense and unignorable. Abnormal. He pauses, hand on the railing and the other moving to his pocket, and squints out at the day.

Clouds have rolled in, not thick but thick enough to diffuse the light and scatter it confusingly around, and he can't say for certain what hour of the morning it is. Typically, sounds have also clued him into that—much like the prison, in fact, and one thing he's found is that the chronologically-driven habits of human beings tend toward the same patterns no matter the setting or the proximity to the world that was. But now he doesn't have that. What he has is this weird silence. Even the calls of the birds seem muted.

Either everyone is inside, or everyone is somewhere else.

He lights up a smoke and lets his head sag between his shoulders. If some shit is going down this morning, if it was planned and no one told him, that shouldn't bother him unduly. It's not as if he's given anyone the impression that he _wants_ to be included in shit like that. It's not as if he'd have much to contribute. It's not as if it would matter to him. He's not on any fucking _council_. He has no stake in this place.

It's not his home.

~

He could go wandering, see if he can find someone, but doing so feels like a bizarrely prohibitive amount of effort, so he stays put, watching that scattered light swell in intensity though it never gets very far. And anyway it's not long before he does see someone; Rick and Michonne coming down the street, making for the house—and they don't have to get very close for him to discern the weariness in them.

It's more pronounced in Rick. He's not stooping, and there's nothing obviously unusual about his stride, but all the same he's walking as if he's carrying something unseen but heavy, and perceives no immediate prospect of being able to put it down.

Which isn't exactly new, not for him. Not these days. But to this degree.

By the time they're climbing up the porch steps he's flicking the sullenly smoldering butt into the grass, half turning to them as they pass and giving them both a single up-nod. Not asking what's been going on, where they've been; he's getting the sense that that'll reveal itself when appropriate, and in any case he's feeling a distinct lack of curiosity about it.

He's not sure what the fuck he's feeling anymore.

Michonne returns the nod, responds with a faint smile, vanishes into the house. She's got the sword slung over her shoulder, he notes—and in fact now that he thinks consciously on it, he did notice that it was gone from the mantle.

Unsurprising. It never should have been put up there to begin with. No doubt she knows that now.

Probably she always did.

Rick lingers. Looking at Daryl, and also not looking at him. Facing the street, one hand on the pillar beside the steps, the other passing in a rough slide down his face. The pits under his eyes are deeper than they should be, deeper even than normal.

And Daryl is wondering how well he slept.

_If his hip was a touchstone. If he was an anchorpoint. If he was meant to be, and somehow failed in that mission._

Finally Rick heaves a sigh and fixes Daryl with that steady, tired gaze. “Wanna take a walk?”

Sure.

~

They walk. Slow; Daryl’s pace is fairly brisk as a matter of habit but he's content to moderate. Rick is pacing, each step like a bead in a rosary. Not prayerful but pensive, and uncomfortably focused.

More people, here and there. Voices. They pass Aaron and Eric’s house; Eric is just going inside, doorknob in his hand, and he glances up and tips them a little wave, which Rick returns. It's not so much that the Zone is waking up as it is coming back to itself from wherever it had gone. Which he can guess, now that he's had some time to ponder it, and when Rick speaks he confirms.

“Town meeting.” He pauses a beat, shoots Daryl a quick and slightly furtive look. “Didn't wanna wake you. It wasn't that no one wanted you there.”

Daryl rolls a shoulder, grunts. _Whatever_.

Quiet for a while. The clouds are beginning to thin out and the sunlight’s cast is more direct, the shadows of the trees and the wall and their striding figures thrown into sharper relief. Without meaning to, without noticing, Daryl has begun to focus on those more than anything, and especially on the swing of Rick’s limbs across the pavement, his bent legs and his loose arms, weirdly long though the man couldn't by any stretch be called _lanky_. His shadow is longer, thinner, and seems to be almost moving out of step with its owner, as if it or Rick is imperceptibly out of phase with the rest of the world.

What the fuck is his brain even doing?

Rick coughs, eyes fixed ahead. “I'm sorry. That I dragged you in there last night.”

Daryl shrugs again, discomfort twisting at his gut. He hadn't been certain whether or not he wanted this to come up and he's still not. “You didn't. I just heard, went.”

“Even so. You stayed, didn't have to do that.”

“Did it help?”

The question startles him even as he asks it. But it shouldn't. It is, after all, the central question, and faith that the answer would be _yes_ is why he was there at all, and why he woke up there this morning.

Right?

“Yeah.” Rick looks at him, less furtive, and a small, sad smile is tugging at the corner of his mouth. Rueful. Perhaps even apologetic. “Never really got back to sleep, but. It did.”

“Alright, then.”

Except now he's thinking about Rick lying there and watching him sleep, those glittering eyes on him, and he's fighting back an odd little shiver.

More quiet. The street isn't long, and it loops around behind the row of townhomes, a couple more single houses and stretches of plain lawn. The grass is neglected, rising higher, and it ripples in shiny waves as the breeze rolls across it. Daryl realizes that they're coming up on Deanna’s house—which he's starting to think of as a kind of makeshift town hall, though the church would probably make more sense for that purpose.

They all must have been here, earlier. Did Rick mean to swing back around this way? Or are they simply following this route because it's what the road does?

Rick is indeed gazing at the house, lips pursed. “Think they might try to put me in charge.”

Daryl looks sharply at him. This is not unexpected, and in fact wasn't Rick talking like he was prepared to make that happen only a few short days ago? Wasn't he practically advocating a coup?

 _And you were ready to go along with him. Back him up. You didn't hesitate, not for one second. Admit it: You didn't hate the idea_.

But that was before. That was before Rick looked so tired. And just now, being put in charge looks like the furthest thing from his preference.

A lot can change in a few short days.

“You don't want that?”

“I dunno.” Rick stares down at his boots, and he stuffs his hands in his pockets and draws a breath. Once more, the corner of his mouth inches upward. “Keeps happening, doesn't it?”

“I guess.” Yes, it does. With alarming regularity.

“I don't know about her. Deanna.” He jerks his head at her house and sucks in another breath, dense and deep. “She's not weak, it's just… I still don't know if any of them really get it. What happened the other night, that didn't settle anything. Just kicked up even more dust, and I don’t know how clear any of us are seeing. And it's gonna get bad. Sooner or later, and if we’re not ready.” He looks sidelong at Daryl, eyes narrowed. Gauging. “What d’you think?”

 _I think I want you to be able to sleep at night_. “I think you…”

He trails off. The words have come to him, all at once and fully formed, which is rare. Extremely rare. Rare enough to be unsettling when it happens, and the words themselves are unsettling enough. True, and truer than he’d frankly like to be in the here and now—not that he world lie, or even can. His brow is furrowed, his thumb drifting up toward his mouth, and there's no point trying to conceal this from Rick. And of course Rick will ask, try to coax it out of him, and the odds of successful resistance are not with him.

And sure enough Rick stops, catches him by the arm. “What?”

He allows himself to be stopped. Turns to Rick, though he isn't quite meeting his eyes. He's working the edge of his cuticle between his teeth, and though it's only for a second or two, he wishes so much that when Rick had suggested the walk, he had scrounged together an excuse not to go. Even a pathetic one. Which all of his excuses would likely be.

Well, he didn't. He's here. So.

Hell.

“Back at the prison,” he says, and while his voice is low, remarkably the words come without stuttering or faltering. “Seein’ you… out in them fields. Got your hands all in the dirt, pig shit all over your shoes.” In spite of himself, he feels the thinnest flicker of a smile. “Weren’t wearin’ your gun. That was the happiest I ever saw you. Since Lori died, it was.”

Rick says nothing. Daryl finally manages to meet his gaze, and what he sees there is more than he can define. Pain, and regret, and something far too much like a bare thread of shame. It wasn't just a place they lost. It wasn't even just a life. He saw it then as well, in those last seconds before the world got blown to hell. What Rick was offering the Governor, what he was trying to argue into reality, when in fact there was never a hope in hell of making it work.

_We all can change._

_We get to start over._

“Can't be who you were, man,” he murmurs, and with sudden vicious ferocity he wants to punch himself in the fucking jaw. Or dig his nail into the new scar on his hand. “Can't none of us be who we were. Not no more.”

“Yeah,” Rick breathes, and closes his eyes. “Yeah.”

~

Rest of the day is simple. Uneventful. He doesn't hang around the house; he goes to where Carol has settled down and sits in her kitchen while she bakes, inhales the delightfully warm vanilla smell, takes a cookie when she offers it to him. It's good, buttery although they're making do without real butter, sweet but not too sweet, and as he munches it in silence she leans back against the counter and watches him, and he doesn't mind the scrutiny.

He never really has minded hers.

He's expecting her to ask what's up. Or not expecting it in the sense that he's surprised when it doesn't happen, but it's the kind of thing she might do. Something is up. He's not positive how obvious it is, but she knows him. She knows the signs.

So how would he answer?

If she asked. Because she doesn't. And he's heading home in the twilight, contemplating dinner and how he doesn't much feel like having any, when the image comes back to him of her in that oven-warmed kitchen, spooning batter onto the cookie sheets—this woman who has slaughtered so many people, without hesitation and without any evident remorse. She's gotten good at it, as good at it as any of them. With the possible exception of Michonne, she might be the most dangerous woman he's ever met.

And she was in that fucking kitchen, making fucking cookies.

It's not that she's hiding that troubles him. It's that she's hiding so well. It's that there's a kind of desperation in how she's doing it, which likely few other people but him could see. She put on this mask out of necessity but that was before, when appearing harmless had advantages, and the situation has altered since then.

But she's still got the mask on. Pressed against her face, ribbons wound around her head.

Rick with his hands in the soft, rich soil and no gun at his hip.

_Who are we? Who are we becoming?_

_Who have we always been?_

~

He wasn't sure what made him do it the first time—the true reason, the core reason under the surface. He isn't sure this time either, when after what feels like hours lying awake and staring at that blank ceiling he gets up and goes out into the hall, down it, to Rick’s door.

It's ajar, the smallest bit. He eases it open, and is immediately greeted by the gleam of Rick’s eyes, open and gazing at him. Awake, focused. His darker shape in the darkness, lying on his side, the hills and valleys of his body. Shorelines, Daryl thinks. The sea between him and them, the tide carrying him, and the shadows curling in the corners of the room like smoke, licking up the walls like black flames.

He doesn't know what the fuck he’s doing. He's very much beginning to doubt whether that matters. Whether he needs to.

What would _she_ say?

_Don’t think. Do._

_Trust._

He's swimming across that sea, coming ashore at the bed. When he reaches it, Rick slides back to make room for him. Does it immediately, that shine never broken by the flicker of a blink. Daryl lowers himself, slides into the yielding warmth Rick has opened up for him, and this time instead of facing the man beside him, he turns away to face the door.

And it doesn't feel like fleeing something.

A pause, the air still as a held breath. Then the weight of a hand on his hip. At the shallow dip of his waist.

An arm sliding around him, gentle. Careful. The unignorable, overwhelmingly real solidity of the body pressed against his back. Not pressed hard, but flush. So close. Closer than anyone has ever been.

Almost. Almost anyone.

He should be terrified. He should be shaking. Not because he thinks he might get hurt; he knows that's not so, knows that Rick would never—and for what reason now? What has he done to earn being hurt? Rick could have chased him out if he wanted him gone, and instead he's lying along Daryl’s body, arm wrapped around him in an awkward half-embrace.

Rick is the one who's shaking.

 _Don’t be scared,_ a voice is whispering between his ears. Words he could say, words that would like to be said, but it's not his own voice he's hearing them in. _It’s all right. Everything is all right. This is. The house isn't going to fall down if you stop being scared. The world isn't going to end. Ended once already anyway. Didn’t it?_

_Ended twice. Hell, even if it does end, third time might be a charm._

Rick is shaking. Daryl says nothing. But he eases into that embrace, lifts a hand and lays it over Rick’s, and gradually Rick eases too and relaxes. His breathing slows, then deepens into what is unmistakably sleep.

The tide of shadows sweeps in.

~

Waking: once in the gray light of before-dawn. Neither of them have moved, except Rick is even closer, one leg nudging between Daryl’s knees. The warmth of his breath against Daryl’s nape, stirring his hair, and the nearly imperceptible graze of his lips, which flutter in a dreamy murmur. Daryl sighs, doesn't flinch, weaves their fingers together over his stomach.

And it feels so right.

 


	5. there was something about the way it tasted so familiar

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _You just wanted to prove there was one safe place, just one safe place where you could love him. You have not found that place yet. You have not made that place yet. You are here. You are here. You’re still right here._
> 
> — Richard Siken, “You Are Jeff”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I think we’re actually not far from the end; this was never going to be a slow burn in the sense I usually mean it, but something a lot more fluid and a lot more gentle. 
> 
> Thanks, as always, for reading. ❤️

Daryl has it on good authority—from who, from where, he hasn't the foggiest, so much knowledge is absorbed via pure osmosis especially when no one takes the time to teach you beyond the bare minimum—that one of the keys to good interpersonal relationships is communication.

So probably that's a significant part of why he's always sucked at those.

What even is _communication?_ The word seems to cover a multitude of baffling possibilities. What do you talk about? What do you _not_ talk about? How do you determine the difference? How much detail? How little? How do you avoid saying the wrong thing, and how do you fix it if you do? _When_ you do, because there's no way in hell you can avoid fucking up forever. What he’s seen firsthand more than bears that out, totally aside from his own personal experience.

Where the hell do you find the _words?_

It's always seemed to him like it's a lot easier for everyone involved to keep their mouths shut.

He does _have_ relationships. Or he guesses that's what you'd call what he has. He just… doesn't know how they work, is all.

So he's never known what the fuck to do when they start to change.

~

They're not talking about it.

It. What? He doesn't know. _It_. This thing, inserted itself between them like the space between his body and Rick’s, the dark world closing on around them and pressing them closer and closer together, but always that distance is there. The night after the second time, he didn't even bother with his own bed. Didn’t question it, and he understood that it was because he didn't care to. Once again Rick left his door not merely unlocked but open, just a crack, and that space between the frame and the edge of the door, like the space that is also the unnamed thing between them, was a force that exerted itself on him and drew him in, and he didn't fight. He went to it, went inside and pulled the door softly closed behind him.

This time Rick was facing away from him, thin white tee almost translucent in the moonlight, revealing the lines of his body—slender yet dense with muscle. So strong, strength viciously beaten into him by a vicious world. Strength he undoubtedly wouldn't have chosen for himself, but there all the same.

Daryl wanted that strength. He wanted it in a way he couldn't hope to define.

Rick stirred a little when Daryl slipped under the covers, but only a little, pressed back against him when Daryl pressed forward. As before, he wove their fingers together when Daryl laid his hand over Rick’s belly, and the muscles beneath his palm fluttered ever so slightly. But Rick wasn't tense, and somehow that lack of tension bled out of him and into Daryl, and it was easy to slide a knee between his and drift away to the sound of the crickets outside.

It was all so easy.

It's everything around it that's turning out to be hard.

~

Imagine this, because he can't not, because it happens: Waking up not to find Rick gone but right the hell there beside him, present in so complete a way that it quietly shocks him into total alertness, although he doesn't move. Rick is on his side and facing him, arm crooked beneath his head, and by the sharp focus in his gaze Daryl can tell that he's been awake for a while.

How long? How long, looking at him? And what the hell is going on behind those clear blue eyes?

The blanket slung along them both makes their hips into two hills, blinded by the shallow valleys of their waists and the much deeper valley between them. But the space no longer feels like space. It feels like something solid and real in and of itself, something he could reach out and touch. Something he could pick up and put aside if he wanted to.

Slow breath. He rises and falls and just as the air accommodates him, so does the mattress under him. Rick matches his breath, and Daryl is filled with the dreamlike conviction that he's perceiving a looking glass version of himself, so similar and at the same time different in every fundamental way, not mimicking him because it has to but instead because it wants to. Moving as he moves. Breathing as he breathes.

Mouthing his name.

He used to wake up like this as a child. For him, the dawn was always the calm after the storm of night, the stillness in the wreckage after a tornado of blundering, booze-reeking darkness crashed through. His head and body pounding, nose clogged with snot and blood and his eyes swollen from crying and from blows; he would lie there in the dimness and feel his body, the awful, inescapable truth of his own occupancy of it, and behind the muzzy wall of the pain he would reflect on the post-storm calm.

How strange, the way no matter how bad it got his father was always asleep by the time the light crept back in. Will Dixon’s drunken rage never crossed this particular threshold. He was like a ghost or a demon, only one the light couldn't drive away forever; he often slept into early afternoon but he would be up and raring to go long before sundown. Twilight never dampened him. But there was always something about the dawn.

In the meantime, Daryl: getting up sometimes and dragging his aching body through the woods to the small lake—really more a glorified pond—that lay not far away. In the stillness the water was always glassy and pale, broken only by gnats and striders and the leaping of hungry fish. He'd sit on the bank and listen to the birds beginning to stir. Breathless, one might call this kind of stillness, only to him it always felt as if the world could finally breathe again.

After hours of suffocation he could fill his lungs.

Take a deep breath before he had to dive again.

The storms never ended. They just took on new faces and new names. Sometimes his brother’s. Sometimes a stranger’s. Sometimes his own. He knows them intimately enough to recognize them on sight, so he knows that this, what’s been happening and what's happening now, is not a storm of any kind. It's something else, something he has no name for. Though perhaps he's encountered it once before now.

Or almost did. That horrible, hateful word.

 _Almost_.

It wasn't a storm. But this is similar calm. The rest of the room is indistinct, as if it hasn't yet quite come into being. The space around them is all that's real. In the silent still, Rick raises a hand, and with a slowness that verges on hesitancy, he extends it and combs his fingers into Daryl’s hair, lifts the tangled strands away from his face.

A shudder that fills only a fraction of a second. A flutter of his muscles. Then gone.

And was that flutter his, or Rick’s?

Rick’s hand lingers, fingertips butterfly-light against Daryl’s temple and thumb resting at the outer edge of his upper lip. No urge to shake him off or bat him away. The simple fact practically bowls him over: _he wants this._ Like the strength, like everything else; he wants this touch, precisely as it is, this much and no less and probably, probably for now, no more.

They have to move slowly. Whatever this is, it's very delicate.

Do they even have to name it? Do they have to capture it with words and drag it, struggling, into brighter light than this? Can't he merely be here with it, inside it, the backlit shape of Rick’s body and his glittering eyes and the warm roughness of his hand? And a kind of desire that also resists naming, pulsing low and fierce inside him, nowhere near between his legs like maybe it should be but instead nestled somewhere between his heart and diaphragm, a place that squeezes into a sweet ache every time he pulls in a breath.

His name, though. Again, a whisper, and he exhales and closes his eyes and sees pale, pristine glass.

Yes. Yes, he's here.

 _Stay_. The word isn't spoken, or whispered, or breathed. It doesn't really seem to come from anywhere at all. It's just there, permeating the room like the light, every bit as unstoppable. There are no curtains in the world he could draw to keep it out.

So he inhales, feels that squeeze, and yields to it. And it feels good. It feels like wanting more, even if _more_ isn't exactly what he wants. And when Rick is much closer it's like he was always there, and when his lips graze Daryl’s, dry and warm as his hand, it's like it was always going to happen.

Maybe there was a storm. Maybe this is what comes after.

_Oh._

_Stay._


End file.
